Probably shouldn't of called my build thread 3.low, since a 5.0 swap is on my list of things to do but this will work for now! Bought this truck a few months ago from a buddy of mine to use as a daily driver, and take the wear and tear off of my other project, which is a 1993 Ford F-150 prerunner.

Well as expected, I can't leave anything stock, so I decided to lower a truck for the first time instead of lifting one like I always have done. Always wanted one since high school and so far it's been a good direction for the Ranger. Been around prerunners and such all my life and have always heard the 3.0 (also called the 3.SLOW) get such a bad rap for being slow, unreliable, and inefficient motors; and so far I can't find proof in any of these rumors.

Anyways, truck is a 2000 Ford Ranger XLT; has about 175,xxx miles in the 3.0 V6 and auto trans as far as I know that's all original. First week I owned it, the water pump went out. So I took that opportunity to not only replace the radiator, but upgrade it to the Explorer V8 dual core radiator. Swap went super easy and really all that was changed was the fan shroud needed to be trimmed and one of the bolt holes to be ovaled out slightly.

Then a few weeks after that, I had another one of my buddies parting out an 01 ranger that had the newer front clip than I had, so I jumped on that as soon as I could as well. Also managed to find a front and rear bumper off the same truck than were damn near brand new

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Drove it around like that for about a month and got the bug to finally pull the trigger and order all the lowering stuff from summit. Saw a few lowered Rangers on this forum with the Mustang bullitt wheels and knew that's the route I had to go.

Scored a set from Craigslist, one was trashed from a curb smack so bought the 4th one from American Muscle on the east coast. Then found some 235/55/17 Goodyear Eagle tires also from CL, and mounted them up on the wheels.

Ended up going with just a 2" DJM lowering spring up front and an axle flip out for the rear, which lowered it about 4" or so.

Had to use 1" wheel spacers up front to have the hub centric Mustang wheels clear the ranger hub size, and overall pushed the tires perfectly to fit in the fender.
And today I threw on some side mirrors from the 06+ rangers. Was a little tricky since I have power mirrors and the new ones had different colored wiring, but a simple test with the test light let me know which wire went to what. That's about all I have done for now, future plans are to maybe put lift shacked in the rear, add rear air shocks and add shorter bumpstops for the front.

Goal here is to have a Daily drivable truck that will handle well on pavement and yet something that I don't have to avoid every pothole in the road with. One of my co-workers is into autocross and hauls ass in his 67 Dodge Dart, and would love to eventually give it a try in my ranger after a few mods. Heres the specs and wishlist of the truck so far
2000 2wd Ford Ranger XLT 4-door
3.0 V6, 4R55e auto trans
DJM 2" Lowering springs in front
DJM 5" Flip kit in rear
99-04 17x8 Factory Mustang Bullitt wheels
235/55/17 Goodyear eagle one tires
2001 Front end conversion
Full Rockford Fosgate stereo with T1 12" sub
Stock exhaust
Stock Motor, 175,xxx miles

Thanks guys!
Took advantage of the half off sale this weekend and got a few goodies. Snagged a beefier front sway bar from a Ford Explorer, and also got a rear sway bar from a ranger. Was looking for bronco 2's and ended up finding a factory sway bar on this ranger that already had the bed removed, so access was way easier than on a bronco 2.

Already installed the rear sway bar and I will say it improves drivability much more. Still believe that I will need some air shocks to help stiffen the suspension a tad bit as well and it should be golden.

Nice! Not a fan of lowered extended cabs but that looks really clean. This is making me want to buy another ranger and drop it

Nice man thanks! I'm just trying to show what else these trucks are capable of with a little out-of-the-box thinking. I could have done a spindle lift with 31's and drove it like that, but it still has has many cons as a "sensibly" lowered one in my opinion... I wanted something sort of unique yet easy enough to do that anyone could do it without any crazy fabrication skills or money. I've been there done that with all my previous trucks and this is something new to me and it's a blast so far.

So word of advice to anyone looking to upgrade your front sway bar, a factory Ford Explorer sway bar DOES NOT fit a ranger with coil spring suspension. I'm sure it only will fit 4wd or Ford Edge frame, since mine hits the frame where the coil bucket flair out to fit the coil. I tried to grind down where the bar rubbed the frame but it will hit as soon as the truck would hit a bump, not worth the hackery to make it work. So stock ranger bar goes back on after unfortunately. Maybe will look into other sway bars later down the road.

I had to abandoned using my Roush front sway bar for a similar issue.
(I miss the better cornering it provided.)

I went back to stock and issues went away.

Yea kinda bummed about it myself, I looked forward to the better cornering as well haha. I think an aftermarket one is about my only option for this thing. I might check out a roush one, because summit wants like $190 bucks for a sway bar that's only 1/16 of an inch thicker and that's not justifiable enough for me to spend that kinda money lol.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyler46

Huh. Have to lock that up in the knowledge box. Is the bar thicker? I'd like to find bigger a bolt-on bar for my truck.

Definitely jot that note down somewhere and save yourself the headache lol. The Explorer sway bar MIGHT work if the ends were kicked out more so they could clear the frame. But you'd need either a really big hydraulic ram of some sort or a lot of heat to change the angle of that bend, or not even sure if that's possible. If it could be done though I sure it would clear and be a nice beefy sway bar upgrade.

Went to install the air shocks today and ran into a few issues that eventually persuaded me to end up not installing them. Main problem was the factory e-brake lines always rub the shocks on every single ranger I've seen, and it would have worn a hole into the rubber sleeve and inevitably caused the shock to leak. So for now I just replaced the leaky worn out shocks with some Napa OEspectrum shocks.
New plan is to just get some Fox or Bilstein 2.0 x 8" emulsion shocks that I can charge with nitrogen. Not going for comfort here, mainly just want to be able to stiffen up the rear end if I ever need to haul a bunch of stuff.